Has to Be Love (9 page)

“My dad.” The cast is yakking on stage and picking up packs, and they're all blending together under the stage lights. Well … now that Abby and Esther have found somewhere else to look. Esther's hair swishes around her shoulder as she glances back at me again, our eyes meeting and her blushing. The blush is probably because I caught her staring. Or because she feels bad for thinking something along the lines of
why is the hot new teacher paying attention to the ugly girl?

Elias's hand slides across my back and clasps my side. “It's not just the Seattle thing. It's the way he touched you. How he asked for you after class the other day … I don't know … What's up with him?”

I have absolutely no idea. And for that matter, I'm not sure what's up with me and my reaction to him.
My heart is still slamming into my ribs.

I lean down, grab my pack, and move for the back door before anyone else steps into our conversation. My mind is spinning, my fingers are shaking, and I swear my lips are getting numb from nerves. “Nothing. I don't know. Nothing.”

“Maybe I should ask what's up with you.”

“Just a lot happening,” I say as I push through the door. “But I'm good. I promise.”

“Okay.” His okay sounds a lot like he should have said, “If you say so.”

I hope he's done asking questions because I don't have any good answers.

“So. Now are you going to tell me where we're going?” I ask as Elias follows me to his truck.

“One of my dad's construction sites,” he says.

I slide into the passenger's seat. One of the construction sites?
Why?

Elias slips in his side and fumbles with his keys for a minute before starting the truck.

“You're being weird,” I say.

“Am I?” He smiles again. “Sorry. We don't have far to go.”

I clutch my hands together in my lap because the mood is just … strange. Elias fiddles with his iPod for a minute and then turns the music on so quietly that I can't hear. All I have to talk about are Columbia (which I can't talk to Elias about), my doctor's appointment (which I don't really want to talk about), or Rhodes (which I definitely don't want to discuss with Elias). When did we end up with nothing to say?

We drive through a small street of five homes with Motter Construction signs hung at the end of the driveways. “So these are your dad's, huh?” I ask even though it's obvious.

“Not just Dad's. Mine too. I'm almost done with school, and I've been helping to run the company for a while now.” He licks his lips, grasps the steering wheel, and stretches his neck to one side and then to the other.

“Right.” I shake my head and squint into the sun, hoping Elias isn't trying to steer us into another too important conversation about where we'll be for the next couple of years.

Avoiding talking about our future during the school day is one thing. It's quite another to avoid it when we're the only two people around. Whenever I think about telling Elias about Columbia, my throat fills with too much saliva and my brain blanks out. He has no idea I even applied. As far as he knows, I'll head to the University of Alaska, and … that's it.

“The place I want to show you is past the neighborhood we're working in, on a bigger piece of property.”

“Doesn't that cost more money? Are you guys doing a custom home or something?” I ask.

His head bobs from side to side. “Yeah … sorta …”

I'm not sure what to make of Elias right now. He's not one for surprises or being coy or whatever this is.

We drive up a driveway that winds through the thick forest, and I chuckle at the two-story house filled with interesting angles that probably doubled the framing costs. “This is exactly the kind of thing your dad rolls his eyes at.”

“I know.” He scoffs. “I've been told many times.”

“So … what is this, exactly?”

We stop and there are two tiny stories of house in the process of being built. Just the skeleton walls are up now. This is my favorite part of seeing the building process, and the thing I understand most about Elias. Right now the house is nothing but possibility. This one is going to be smallish but wicked interesting, and I'm sure Elias will do the woodwork inside he loves so much.

The trees are only cleared a short way around the house on all sides, leaving it in the center of a carved circle in the forest.

I close my eyes for a moment and think about how his fingers felt running along my skin, and I can't hide the shiver that courses through me.

“You cold?”

“Thinking about you,” I answer before I try to convince myself that Elias is right and it is just the cold.

His dark, wild eyes are back, and I feel my body screaming—
yes, please!

Instead of leaning in for a kiss or a nice make-out session like I want, he pushes open his door.

“Come on.” He slides out of his side of the truck and walks around to get my door.

I take his hand as he helps me down, and instead of him hugging me or at least giving me a smile like he normally would, we're treading over the uneven ground and around small piles of scrap wood to the front of the house. I'm stumbling to keep up as his fingers tighten around mine. This is weirdly nervous and unusual for Elias.

“Okay.” He stops in front of where the front door will be.

“Why are we here?” I smile, thinking of a few things I'd like to do while alone with him, and maybe the cold will keep us from going too far. That should make me feel better. Or him feel better. Or something.

“I wanted to show you my house. I designed this one for … for, um … for me.”

Air becomes unbreathable as everything around me freezes. “Your
what?”

“My house.” His smile is a mix of pride and sheepishness.

My jaw drops, and even though I knew Elias was sticking around here after school and working construction with his dad, the reality of that hits me. Who would want to be tied down to a house at
eighteen?

“You look like you're gonna pass out, Clara.” He rests his hand gently on my waist. “You okay?”

“Just … surprised,” I squeak.

“How can you be surprised? You've known I was going to keep working at the construction company with my dad. I've even shown you like fifteen houses I've designed for myself.”

“Right.”

What does this mean? Anything? Nothing? Cecily's words echo in my head about how Elias would probably marry me a month out of high school, sooner if we have more “incidents” like on my living-room floor the other day. I firmly believe Elias would be a virgin at thirty if it took him that long to find the right girl. But as close as we are, and as much as I care about him, I'm just not ready to think about forever.

“I wanna show you. Come on.” He wraps his arm around me, which is good because it grounds me enough to keep me in the moment instead of allowing me to run screaming.

“And this'll be the kitchen …” He lets me go long enough to wave his arms around countertop spaces and sink placement and fridge and oven, and it's all so final and domestic and …
foreign.

His brows are up and I know he's looking for me to show excitement that I've got to find. Got to.

“Show me upstairs?” I ask after swallowing something that feels like a basketball.

“We're not done down here.” He pecks my cheek before leading me out of the kitchen and into the dining room, which looks like every other corner in the house that's still just two-by-fours and two-by-sixes and a few wires running through walls that barely exist.

“Right.”
Silly
me, whose brain is on total overload right now.

By the time Elias is done raving about what he's going to do downstairs, he takes my hand and leads me up the wooden steps to the top story.

My stomach's turning over at the adultness of it all and how comfortable he is with that, and how he's barely let go of me, and how I should be jumping up and down with him. Instead I want to go home and bury myself in TV or crawl into a corner of the barn for a while so I don't have to think about Elias and houses and school.

I'm pretty sure I make a few witty, Clara-like comments as he shows me bedrooms for
future family,
which kicks my heart rate up, and then he stops in the middle of a very cool but slightly odd-shaped room—one side protrudes from the house a bit, the walls surrounding us in a semi-circle.

“This is the master bedroom.”

“Nice.” I nod a few times as I look around. “Cozy,” I tease as my heart continues its sprint.

He's giving me that “Elias” look. The one that says a million things right behind his eyes. All the ways he loves me and wants to take care of me, and wants and needs me to know how special I am to him. I suck in a few gulps of air, but it's not enough, and the room starts to spin.

“Clara?” His voice is so far away that I'm not even sure if it's him.

I reach out to grab a wall, but nothing's there, and I reach again and stumble. Elias grasps my waist, steadying me.

My stomach turns over again.
House. Family. Master bedroom.
And he hasn't asked me to marry him. Hasn't asked me to be with him. But what is this, if not that? This is not part of my plan. I can't do this. Way too close to permanence. But maybe I shouldn't be suffocating. Not with a guy I've known since forever, but …

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Feel sick. Hit me fast.” At least it's all truth. Hopefully he won't ask me what made me feel sick because there would be no good way to deal with that one—at least not without some very creative lying. I have to buy myself some time.

“We should get you home.”

“Yeah.” I gasp for good effect, even though, once again, it makes me a little horrible. “Thanks.”

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be sick tomorrow. And maybe the day after. And maybe again the day after that.

10

I lean my head against the wall in my tiny, narrow stairway and take another sip of hot chocolate. The rain spatters and pounds on the metal roof and slams into the panes. Spring storm, which suits my mood perfectly. I push my feet back and forth on the wooden steps in my fuzzy socks and let my eyes fall closed. There has to be a poem in this hollowed-out feeling in my chest. I just haven't found it yet.

Because I'm “sick,” Dad ordered pizza for our dinner night with Mr. Kennedy so I won't have to cook. I hear him in the kitchen though, wandering probably. He's at loose ends because it's raining and his outdoor projects can't happen right now.

We leave for Seattle in just over a week. My life is going to change—or at least be on the path to changing. I should be dancing with excitement, but instead my stomach is tighter every day. The tension strings in my body have turned into wires—and not the good kind of tension wires I get from kissing Elias.

In about four weeks, I'm supposed to tell Columbia if I'm attending next year or not. Which I'm not. I know the deadline is a Tuesday and I know I should write my explanation for asking for a deferment until next year. I just haven't brought myself to do it yet.

“Rhodes!” Dad's voice carries through the entry and dining room, through the kitchen, and to where I sit on my tiny stairwell. “Great to see you again!”

“Sorry I'm late,” Rhodes apologizes. “I got a call from a friend who's heading to Nome this summer to help with an old native-site dig.”

I groan because I know exactly what Dad's going to say next.

“I helped on a dig once. Totally unexpected. I had to land my Cessna on the road north of Fairbanks and was flagged down …”

I tune out, stand up, and slide my hands over my soft, gray-striped pajama pants. No point in getting dressed when you're for-real sick, so I'm not going to bother even though I'm just pretend sick. My socks slip as I slide my foot across each step before allowing myself to step down. Being social isn't really in the realm of what I'd like to do with my evening.

“Just amazing that you can have experienced so much at your young age,” Dad says. “I'm proud of you for it, even if your parents don't quite understand.”

What did I just miss?

“Well, thank you,” Rhodes says. “I guess they thought with all the traveling we did when I was growing up, I'd be ready to settle when they were, and …” His voice has gotten quieter and slower. “And I wasn't.”

“Well, that's too bad. But I'm sure glad it brought you to our neck of the woods. If you're at all interested in getting your pilot's license, we should definitely go up as much as we can before your time here is over.”

“That would be … really great. Thank you so much.” Rhodes chuckles, but it sounds heavier than normal. “It's on my list for sure.”

I clutch my mug in both hands as if it could somehow protect me from whatever I might think and feel around Rhodes tonight—especially with how uncertain I feel about finding a forever with Elias when it means starting that timeline now.

“Clara.” Rhodes's brows shoot up. “Your dad said you've been sick.”

“She's a toughie.” Dad winks at me as he flips open the top of a pizza box.

“I'm a little better.” I take another sip of hot chocolate.

Dad and Rhodes continue to chat about airplanes through dinner, but Rhodes is slow to answer and, unlike most nights, doesn't offer any stories of his own.

I cut up my pizza and then push the bites around on my plate. Elias isn't going to just
not ask
if he was about to ask what I think he was about to ask at his house, and I have no idea what to do about him wanting so much with me. I should be thrilled that anyone as stable, sweet, and good-looking as him would even give me a second glance, but there's something off. Like when I finish a poem but don't turn it in because something in the rhythm just isn't … right. I so wish I could stop thinking about this.